Best Picture

The Best Picture Oscar is an Academy Award of Merit presented to the best overall motion picture of the year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only to vote on the final ballot, but also to nominate. During the annual Academy Awards ceremony, Best Picture is reserved as the final award presented and, since 1951, is collected at the podium by the film's producers. The Academy Award for Best Motion Picture is considered the most important of the Academy Awards, as it is the final award presented, representing the combined directing, acting, and writing efforts put forth for a film.

Contents

History

At the 1st Academy Awards ceremony (for 1927 and 1928), there was no Best Picture award. Instead, there were two separate awards, one called Most Outstanding Production, won by the epic Wings, and one called Most Artistic Quality of Production, won by the art film Sunrise. The awards were intended to honor different and equally important aspects of superior filmmaking, and in fact the judges and the studio bosses who sought to influence their decisions paid more attention to the latter - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer head Louis B. Mayer, who had disliked the realism of King Vidor's The Crowd, pressured the judges not to honor his own studio's film, and to select Sunrise instead. The next year, the Academy instituted a single award called Best Production, and decided retroactively that the award won by Wings had been the equivalent of that award, with the result that Wings is often listed as the winner of a sole Best Picture award for the first year. The title of the award was eventually changed to Best Picture for the 1931 awards.

Since 1944, the Academy has restricted nominations to five Best Picture nominees per year. As of the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony (for 2009), there have been 474 films nominated for the Best Picture award. Throughout the past 82 years, AMPAS has presented a total of 82 Best Picture awards. Invariably, the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director have been very closely linked throughout their history. Of the 82 films that have been awarded Best Picture, 60 have also been awarded Best Director. Only three films have won Best Picture without their directors being nominated (though only one since the early 1930s): Wings (1927/28), Grand Hotel (1931/32), and Driving Miss Daisy (1989). The only two Best Director winners to win for films which did not receive a Best Picture nomination are likewise in the early years: Lewis Milestone (1927/28) and Frank Lloyd (1928/29).

However, in 2009, The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced that the number of Best Picture nominees would be increased from five to ten. The expansion was a throwback to the Academy's early years in the 1930s and '40s, when anywhere between eight and twelve films were shortlisted. "Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize," AMPAS President Sid Ganis said in a press conference.

Winners and nominees

In the list below, the winner of the award for each year is shown first, followed by the other nominees. Except for the early years (when the Academy used a non-calendar year), the year shown is the one in which the film first premiered in Los Angeles County, California; normally this is also the year of first release, but it may be the year after first release (as with Casablanca and, if the film-festival premiere is considered, Crash). This is the year before the ceremony at which the award is given; for example, a film exhibited theatrically during 2005 was eligible for consideration for the 2005 Best Picture Oscar, awarded in 2006. The awards ceremony (1st, 2nd, etc.) appears in parentheses after the awards year, linked to the article on that ceremony. Each individual entry shows the title followed by the nominated producers or production company. Until 1950, the Best Picture award was given to the production company; from 1951 on, it has gone to the producer. The official name of the award has changed several times over the years:

1927/28 → 1928/29: Outstanding Picture

1929/30 → 1940: Outstanding Production

1941 → 1943: Outstanding Motion Picture

1944 → 1961: Best Motion Picture

1962 → Present: Best Picture

For the first ceremony, three films each were nominated for two separate awards similar to the Best Picture Award. For the following three years, five films were nominated for the award. This was expanded to eight in 1933, to ten in 1934, and to twelve in 1935, before being dropped back to ten in 1937. In 1945 it was reduced back to five. This number remained until 2010, when it was once again raised to ten.

Related categories

Notes

↑ 1.01.11.21.3This is not an official nomination. There were no announcements of nominations, no certificates of nomination or honorable mention, and only the winners were revealed during the awards banquet on April 3, 1930. Though not official nominations, the additional names in each category, according to in-house records, were under consideration by the various boards of judges.